


your hand in my hand, so still and discreet

by swimthewholeriogrande



Series: i'd be home with you [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Friendship, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-01-15 12:33:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18499066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimthewholeriogrande/pseuds/swimthewholeriogrande
Summary: They find them, but what is it that they've found?





	your hand in my hand, so still and discreet

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! People seemed to enjoy this series so here's another installment. Please comment any ideas you have for other extracts, thanks for reading!

The smell hits her first. 

It's a solid wall of sweat, vomit, festering infection, and it makes Rosa reel a little, her eyes watering; between that and the low flickering light, it takes her a moment to take in the tiny sitting room, and when she does she really does want to cry. 

The oddest thing, in this surreal scene, is that Jake and Amy are on opposite sides of the room - and that is so rare, so wrong. Jake is on his side, limbs akimbo and bent at strange angles, and she can see the bloody saliva dripping from his mouth. He is utterly, utterly still. Amy is sitting up at least, her wrists bent over her head and forcing her shoulders taut and tense, but her eyes are so glazed that Rosa thinks she's dead. Thinks they're both dead. 

"Rosa," Terry says, gentle and horrified behind her, and Rosa enters the room. 

She goes to Jake first, simply because he looks even more deceased than Amy, and checks his pulse at his neck; it's there, but her fingers come away tacky and red. She can't focus on his wounds, can't even look at them. She has to move on. 

The second she touches Amy's neck the other woman bucks and seizes once, her shoulders p-u-l-l-i-n-g against paper thin skin until Rosa thinks they'll pop out of their sockets - they already have before. Rosa snaps her fingers in front of Amy's eyes; her pupils are the size of planets.

"Santi _ago_ ," her voice breaks, "Santiago, please."

Amy lets out a whine. Rosa sees blood crusted around her nose, bruises spreading under her eyes, something broken and never healed in her face. "S'rry," she croaks, looking at something that isn't there, "mm, stop, stop."

Rosa grits her teeth and keeps talking, sawing at the ties at Amy's wrists with her penknife, not even aware of what she's saying. She knows she's crying, harder than she ever has, and she can hear Jake screaming incoherently. Amy's head jerks suddenly. 

"Not real," she whimpers miserably. Rosa promises she is. She knows Amy doesn't believe her, but she lifts her - God, she weighs nothing, and her wounds look apocolyptic.

She won't die, right? And Jake won't die, right? And Rosa isn't crying, right, she's just dreaming and Jake and Amy aren't really hurt at all?

Right. Right. Right.

-

That is his child.

Holt has never had children and never will; he does not generally indulge Peralta's father-figure impression of him, even though he has never discouraged it. He has of course always cared for the younger man, but evidently it has taken this - this - for him to realise that he cares for Jake, loves Jake, in a way that he imagines only a parent can.

Because that is his child, small and pale in the hospital bed, eyes dull and concussed as he slurs his answers to the doctor. That is his child that someone has taken and shaken and broken, mangled, _tortured_ , and Holt can feel Jake's pain with every breath he himself takes. It is a phantom ache that makes his eye twitch, his heartrate slow. That is his child.

And he has failed him.

-

They keep them in the same room, thank God. Charles knows that if Any and Jake were separated right now one of them would probably just about burst and he'd be right after them. He assigns himself to guard duty and sits in the uncomfortable chair by the wall, a senitel while they sleep and wake up and answers questions and sleep again, always asking for each other but rarely awake at the same time.

He wishes the doctors and officers would leave them alone. They're too tired for this. Charles wants to wrap them in a hug and never let them go, because maybe if he had all those months ago they wouldn't have been taken, but he doesn't want to hurt them. He never wants to hurt them.

Amy calls to him on the third night, one of the only times she's acknowledged the presence of anyone but a nurse or doctor - stuck in her own head so much that Charles has got to assume she's writing some kind of novel in there - and grips his hand with surprising strength. "Tell me he's dead," she croaks fiercely, "that man. He's gone, right, Boyle?"

(The man in question, a Mr Joseph Weitz, is in fact two floors below them and very much alive; no one could stop Rosa when she went for him directly after placing Amy in the ambulance, and she broke his cheekbone before Terry could drag her off.)

Charles smiles like he does when Nicolaj wakes up from a nightmare, all no-monsters-in-the-wardrobe. "Yeah, of course, Amy." he promises. "Go back to sleep."


End file.
